Spending on cloud IT infrastructure will grow 26.4 percent to reach $33.4 billion this year, according to the latest from the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker. IDC’s forecast encompasses spending on private and public cloud IT servers, storage and Ethernet switches.
Public cloud IT infrastructure spending will total $21.7 billion in 2015, a 32.2 percent year-over-year (YoY) increase, IDC highlights in a press release. Private cloud IT infrastructure spending will rise 16.8 percent YoY to total $11.7 billion. In contrast, IDC expects 2015 spending on IT infrastructure outside that for cloud IT will remain flat.
IDC anticipates overall 2015 cloud IT infrastructure spending will post YoY increases across all world regions and technologies. Spending on public IT cloud infrastructure will exceed that for private cloud IT infrastructure as cloud service providers continue to expand their data centers and service offerings, IDC says.
Cloud Spending Forecast
Looking out over the longer term, IDC forecasts cloud IT infrastructure spending will increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.6 percent over the five-year period from 2015 through 2019. Reaching $15.6 billion, cloud IT infrastructure spending will account for 46.5 percent of spending on global IT infrastructure overall. Spending on non-cloud IT infrastructure is forecast to fall at a 1.4 percent CAGR.
At a forecast 16.5 percent CAGR, public cloud IT infrastructure spending will reach $35.3 billion in 2019 and continue to outpace that for private cloud IT infrastructure, which will grow at 14 percent CAGR to total $19.2 billion, according to IDC.
“End users continue to evaluate various approaches to adopting cloud-based IT: some integrate public cloud service into their IT strategies, others choose to build their own private clouds or use third-party private cloud offerings, and some, seeing benefits in both, implement hybrid cloud strategies,” IDC research director, storage systems Natalya Yezhkova was quoted in the press release.
“The breadth and width of cloud offerings only continue to grow, with an increasing universe of business- and consumer-oriented solutions being born in the cloud and/or served better by the cloud. This growing demand from the end user side and expansion of cloud-based offerings from service providers will continue to fuel growth in spending on the underlying IT infrastructure in the foreseeable future.”
